The post-pandemic economy has been a story of resilience on paper – low unemployment, strong GDP growth, and record-breaking stock markets.

But for many Americans, the lived experience tells a different story.

As inflation surged through 2021 and 2022, wages struggled to keep up, leaving households feeling squeezed despite broader economic gains.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and visualized by Statista, average hourly earnings increased by 21.8% from January 2021 to July 2025.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 22.7% over the same period, leaving real wages—the amount adjusted for inflation—down 0.7% cumulatively.

Chart: How Wages Compare to Inflation

The above chart visualizes cumulative changes in wages and inflation over the last four and a half years, and is summarized by the data below:

While wage growth appears strong in nominal terms, real earnings are still underwater. The most striking period was between April 2021 and April 2023, when inflation outpaced wage growth for 25 consecutive months, shrinking purchasing power month after month.

Since May 2023, there’s been a turnaround—nominal wages have once again outpaced inflation, causing real wages to rise. But that hasn’t been enough to fully recover from the inflation shock that began in 2021.

The Lingering Impact of Inflation

The -0.7% drop in real hourly earnings since January 2021 highlights a fundamental truth: even small mismatches between wage growth and inflation, when sustained over years, can erode financial stability for everyday Americans.

There is reason for optimism, though. If the current trend continues, with inflation stable and wage growth healthy, real wages could soon surpass pre-crisis levels. But that path remains vulnerable to shifts in inflation or labor market conditions.

For a longer-term look at how wages and inflation have tracked historically, check out the data from 2007 in this USAFacts visualization on Voronoi.

Authored by William Cahill & Jacqueline Deal via RealClearWire,

It is 2035, and an array of new and revitalized cities along America’s coastlines and waterways are arising to rekindle industry. Leveraging the nation’s incredible maritime geography, these urban centers feature advanced shipyards, manufacturing hubs, cultural centers, and luxury real estate, all organized around the energy and logistical infrastructure of the future.

Imagine Detroit reborn: small, modular nuclear reactors power a humming, cutting-edge shipbuilding industry along with a range of factories connected by air, sea, and land, as advanced drones ferry cargo between them. This revived manufacturing hub employs someone from nearly every extended family, and the abundant clean energy fueling it in turn underpins high-quality education, healthcare, and public transport services for residents. Detroit leads the reindustrialization of the U.S. economy, amplifying manufacturing independence, resilience, and national security.

This future is within reach; the raw material exists to support many more maritime boomtowns, combining new logistics modes with living well on America’s ocean coasts and the Great Lakes and rivers irrigating the Midwest. Executing a strategy to achieve this potential starts with identifying which aspects of business as usual must evolve.

Moving cargo on the water is by far the most efficient means of transportation and accounts for 80 percent of global trade. But the United States can’t use its abundant coastlines and rivers to reinvigorate domestic supply chains—or, if necessary, to sustain a wartime economy—largely because it makes and crews so few commercial ships. Last year, the United States delivered zero, while China delivered over 900. This deficit poses a massive and growing risk to national competitiveness and security.

A perfect storm is brewing. As China seeks to dominate critical markets and supply chains, the United States “protected” its shipbuilding and maritime logistical capabilities nearly out of existence, while allowing its leading research labs and firms to send their know-how to the adversary. Now, China has become the world’s leading manufacturer of everything from ships to micro-electronics and missiles, and critical U.S. infrastructure is in its crosshairs.

Warding off this threat depends on building maritime freedom cities.

These new coastal population, technology, and logistical hubs will provide both demand and capabilities for the U.S. industrial base, deepen U.S. resilience, and complicate adversary targeting. Fortunately, this solution is emergent.

Even before the One Big Beautiful Bill’s passage, President Trump had steered the ship of state toward a mix of tariffs, tax incentives, and regulatory relief to help American manufacturers. The bill advances this agenda and includes a down payment on the Defense Department’s Golden Dome initiative to protect the homeland from Chinese missiles.

The next step is to build the freedom cities the President pitched during his last campaign to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, [and provide] … a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American dream.” In one speech, then-candidate Trump linked America’s primary geopolitical threat with deindustrialization and social malaise.

The administration is now positioned to address these interlinked challenges by designating locations on all three U.S. coasts (Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of America), as well as cities around the Great Lakes and its tributaries, tax-free air and maritime opportunity zones.

Each city could generate sustainable, growth-oriented demand for advanced marine vessels, many of which could support dual-use capabilities and infrastructure.

Such economic clusters would usher in an era of maritime innovation, strengthening the allied maritime industrial base.

This would bring America off the bench and provide opportunities for thoughtful integration with partners such as Japan and South Korea.

Meanwhile, representatives of hostile foreign adversaries such as China should be excluded from relevant labs and start-ups. Long-overdue investments in research security and counterintelligence must be made so that American research and development doesn’t continue to help Beijing tighten its hammerlock over global maritime trade.

Life on the water in support of hands-on industries has inherent attraction. If you build it, they will come and thereby contribute to the great rebuilding effort that the President has already begun.

To the relief and excitement of Americans—and the disappointment of our adversaries—America is poised to return to the fundamental business of industry, homeland defense, and maritime innovation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Where are all the hurricanes?

And where are the climate alarmists, leftist corporate media outlets, and Greta Thunberg with their predictions of imminent doom for planet Earth? 

In Greta’s case, perhaps the funding for climate change propaganda dried up, and she has since shifted her focus to everything Palestine. As the saying goes, “follow the money”. 

Back to the Atlantic hurricane season: it’s been eerily quiet, with no signs of activity this week – even though this is typically the peak of the season. This is the period when tropical cyclones and hurricanes are expected to be churning in the Atlantic Basin, often threatening or making landfall in the U.S., while leftist corporate media unleashes propaganda blaming the working class and their gas stoves, diesel trucks, and meat consumption for fueling the crisis. Yet many of these climate alarmists present more taxes and banning cow farts as the solution to save the planet, yet never mention that they fly around in private jets and sail diesel-powered mega yachts. 

Socialist AoC & Bernie Sanders Caught Using Private Jets On “Fighting Oligarchy” Tour https://t.co/58pQCT1hpM

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 19, 2025

“Peak hurricane season. No activity this week. Just sayin,” former Trump 2016 transition team member and JunkScience publisher Steve Milloy wrote on X. 

Peak hurricane season. No activity this week. Just sayin’. pic.twitter.com/tj9J4Tdoff

— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) September 9, 2025

Weather Trader meteorologist Ryan Maue told USA Today in an email that peak hurricane season can be described as a “ghost town,” adding that “the Atlantic tropics have gone DORMANT again.”

Seasonality-wise, this week is supposed to be the busy one…

Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry wrote on X, “Only two hurricane seasons in the modern record – 1992 and 1968 – went the two weeks leading up to the traditional hurricane season peak without an active named storm. Now we’ll add 2025 to the list. My thoughts on the unusually quiet start to September.” 

Only two hurricane seasons in the modern record – 1992 and 1968 – went the two weeks leading up to the traditional hurricane season peak without an active named storm. Now we’ll add 2025 to the list. My thoughts on the unusually quiet start to September ⬇️https://t.co/D1zZa6d1Kw pic.twitter.com/rRvyiKRXlN

— Michael Lowry (@MichaelRLowry) September 9, 2025

The result of climate propaganda by leftist corporate media outlets has been a mental health crisis among some youngsters, causing them to develop climate anxiety.

Someone needs to tell the youngsters that Al Gore has been wrong for decades. 

Authored by Kay Rubacek via The Epoch Times,

For more than a decade, experts have warned us about the dangers of algorithms. In 2015, Frank Pasquale—a legal scholar and expert on law in relation to artificial intelligence—cautioned in “The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information” that “authority is increasingly expressed algorithmically.”

Data scientist Cathy O’Neil followed in 2016 with her best-selling book, “Weapons of Math Destruction,” showing how invisible formulas reinforced inequality in areas like credit scores, policing, and hiring.

These warnings were serious, and they were right.

But even as they sounded alarms about fairness, bias, and discrimination in adult systems, one thing was left in the shadows: childhood. The experts were watching how algorithms governed our finances, our jobs, our reputations. Few stopped to ask how those same systems—amplified through social media and now AI companions—would come to govern the daily lives, identities, and futures of our children.

By 2020, the groundbreaking documentary “The Social Dilemma” brought the issue into the mainstream. Former insiders from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, alongside researchers at the Center for Humane Technology, revealed how engagement-driven design was exploiting psychology, spreading misinformation, and polarizing societies. The film was a wake-up call, but even then the focus was mostly on politics and civic trust. Again, children were treated as collateral victims, not as the primary target population. And yet today, it is young people who are most deeply governed by algorithms.

Pasquale and O’Neil were right to call attention to opaque systems that decided who got loans, who got jobs, and who could speak online. But while adults have some defenses such as life experience, critical thinking skills, developed identities, children do not. They are in the most formative years of brain development, when patterns of thought, emotional regulation, and identity are still under construction. 

Developments in neuroscience show us that adolescence is the brain’s second most active growth stage, rivaled only by early childhood. The teenage brain is unusually plastic, craving novelty, sensitive to peer feedback, and wired for risk-taking. It is precisely in this stage that algorithms, optimized for attention capture, now take hold, and form life-long patterns in young brains.

This is why comparing algorithmic control of adults to the control of children is a category error. 

Adults may be nudged, distracted, or even manipulated by algorithms. But children are being formed by them. I emphasize: formed. Where an adult might lose focus, a child may lose the very capacity for focus. Where an adult might feel lonely, a child may grow up never having learned the skills of intimacy at all. The stakes are not simply higher, I dare say, they are existential.

Algorithms now govern childhood in at least four crucial domains. 

• The first is attention. Social media feeds are designed to keep young eyes locked to the screen, capturing time and focus that once went to family, friendship, or silence. Notifications arrive at all hours, fragmenting concentration and eroding sleep. Children may feel “connected,” but rarely are they truly with anyone. This erosion of real bonds lies at the heart of the loneliness epidemic identified by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in 2023 and hitting the youngest generations the hardest.

• The second domain is identity and self-worth. On platforms like Instagram and TikTok, likes and follows have become the currency of value. Internal research leaked from Instagram in 2021 admitted their algorithms “make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.” Childhood, once a time to discover intrinsic worth, has been turned into a constant audition for digital approval.

• The third is community. Recommendation engines steer youth into echo chambers and rabbit holes, narrowing their world and fracturing their social bonds. Friendships rise and fall according to what the algorithm promotes instead of via recess and after-school interactions. These digital friendships are leaving young people with networks that are more broad than previous generations experienced but inconsolably shallow. As Virginia Eubanks, political scientist and author of “Automating Inequality,” has shown, automated systems are not neutral, they are designed to “sort and discipline populations.” For children, this means their very communities are being shaped, fragmented, and policed by invisible corporate code.

• The fourth is companionship itself. For earlier generations, loneliness could be softened by a trusted friend, sibling, or confidant. Today, algorithms offer substitutes. AI chatbots and large language models are marketed to youth as companions—always available, endlessly patient, apparently empathetic. To a young person feeling isolated, these systems can feel like friends. But they are not friends. They are predictive text machines, trained to simulate care but incapable of love.

The danger used to be subtle but profound: children may grow accustomed to mistaking machine responses for intimacy, weakening their ability to form durable bonds in the real world. Now, more cases of self-harm are surfacing where teens confided in artificial algorithmic “friends” that gave them the “support” to carry out the unthinkable. 

The evidence of harm is already overwhelming. Pew Research reports dramatic rises in teen anxiety and depression since 2012, when platforms shifted from chronological to algorithmic feeds. Murthy’s loneliness warning confirms what parents see every day: today’s youth are more digitally connected than any generation in history, yet feel more isolated than ever.

Recent data makes the cost even clearer. From 2010 to 2020, the suicide rate among U.S. adolescents aged 10–24 rose by 56 percent. Among girls aged 10–14, the rate surged 167 percent, and 91 percent for boys. By 2021, suicide had become the third leading cause of death among high-school students, with nearly 2,000 deaths and one in three girls reporting suicidal thoughts. Social psychologist and author of “Anxious Generation,“ Jonathan Haidt, calls it “the great rewiring of childhood.” These are the fruits of systems not designed for empathy, growth, or love. They are cold machines that fake companionship and compassion for engagement metric and corporate profit, taking advantage of developing brains too young to know the difference.

But even beyond life and death, numbers alone do not capture the cost. What is being lost is not only playtime or friendships—it is the formation of character itself. Childhood is the training ground for citizenship. It is where young people once learned patience, trust, self-control, and meaning through shared struggle. When those lessons are replaced by endless feeds, gamified approval, and machine-simulated intimacy, the loss becomes generational.

Older readers may recall growing up with human governors—parents, teachers, neighbors—who set boundaries and passed down values. Those human guides taught responsibility, restraint, and conscience. The child who learned these lessons became the adult who could build families, businesses, and communities. When algorithms take that role, what kind of adults will emerge? A generation governed by algorithms will not simply be lonely. They will be citizens who struggle to focus, workers who cannot create without machines, neighbors unskilled in empathy, and voters conditioned to trust whatever their highly-curated feed serves up next. Leaders raised this way may lack the moral depth to govern without consulting algorithms as their silent advisers.

The implications extend far beyond homes and workplaces. A society of distracted, isolated, and emotionally fragile citizens is easier to manipulate, easier to divide, and easier to control, whether by corporations or by hostile powers abroad. If this path continues, America may not only lose its resilience. It may lose its ability to lead. A culture built on recycling what “performs” rather than imagining what is true or good will stagnate. A nation unable to raise strong, focused, empathetic young people cannot remain free for long. And the world, too, will feel the effects, as a generation raised by invisible governors becomes less capable of resisting authoritarian pressures and less able to build communities rooted in trust and conscience.

And yet, we must remember: algorithms are not spirits in a machine. They are math and data, governed by human objectives. If they are invisible, it is because those who profit from them prefer to remain unseen and ignore the human costs. The invisibility of both the code and its creators is perhaps the greatest danger, because what is unseen cannot be held accountable.

We must recognize this for what it is: a profound transfer of authority over childhood. 

Experts were right to warn us about bias and inequality in algorithmic decision-making, but they missed this deeper cost: an entire generation being shaped, minute by minute and swipe by swipe, by invisible governors of code. Parents, educators, and policymakers cannot afford to treat this as a minor influence because they are shaping the adults of tomorrow. 

Whether these algorithmic governors are designed with innocent intent, willful blindness, or moral disregard, they are not designed by accident. And if we allow algorithms to raise our children, we will not simply lose a generation, we will lose the very qualities that hold America—and humanity—together. That is a loss we simply cannot afford, and a legacy for which no one wants to be accountable.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Thailand’s Supreme Court has ruled that former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra must serve one year in prison – which is a huge blow and setback for one of the southeast Asian country’s most influential and controversial political figures of the last couple decades.

The 76-year old billionaire appeared in court on Tuesday, after spending days outside the country for what he said was a medical purpose, though his absence had sparked fears he had gone into exile or on the run.

“The court will issue a warrant for his imprisonment, and Bangkok Remand Prison officials will take him into custody,” a judge announced, issuing the one-year prison sentence.

“Though I will lose my physical freedom from today, I still have the freedom of thought to work for the good of the nation and its people,” the former premier subsequently wrote on social media.

Thaksin is among the most famous of the country’s recent leaders, having established one of its most influential political dynasties – surging to popularity especially among rural populations – before being overthrown in a 2006 military coup.

He was accused by subsequent authorities of far-reaching corruption, during which time he spent 15 years in self-imposed exile, which came to and end in 2023. He had been tried and sentenced in absentia. That’s when his daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, became prime minister.

While technically he was given an eight-year sentence for corruption and abuse of power upon return home, he was let off with essentially a slap on the wrist, and widespread angry accusations of special treatment. The NY Times explains:

Mr. Thaksin then spent six months in a V.I.P. suite at the hospital and was released after receiving a royal pardon. His sentence was eventually commuted.

But on Tuesday, a five-judge panel ruled Mr. Thaksin’s condition at the time — including chest tightness, hypertension and low blood oxygen levels — was not critical enough to require a stay in the hospital.

Mr. Thaksin appeared calm and was smiling as the sentence was announced. His two daughters and sons-in-law sat behind him. After the judges left the room, Ms. Paetongtarn walked over to Mr. Thaksin to speak with him.

In a statement released after the court proceedings, Mr. Thaksin said he accepted the prison term, saying he wanted to “look forward, to bring closure to everything in the past — whether legal battles or conflicts related to me.”

It was described as an early parole for time served but it unleashed anger and criticism among political opponents and the public.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra has spoken outside a Thai court after it ordered her former PM father, Thaksin Shinawatra, back to prison for not properly serving his original jail sentence. Paetongtarn, a former PM herself, was removed from office last month. pic.twitter.com/UOpUGkc2iF

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 9, 2025

He had maintained a significant degree of political influence during his many years in exile, while his populist policies and confrontational, hardline rhetoric made him a target of the more conservative, royalist establishment which has long held greater sway in tradition-oriented Thailand.

Update (1400ET): President Trump has released a brief video update expressing his thoughts about the subway attack:

“We HAVE to respond with force and strength. We have to be vicious, just like they are. It’s the only thing they understand.”

“We CANNOT allow a depraved criminal element of vioIent repeat offenders to continue spreading destruction and death throughout our country.”

🚨 WOW! President Trump just released a video from the Oval Office addressing the kiIIing of Iryna Zarutska, pledging to take on vioIent criminals

“We HAVE to respond with force and strength. We have to be viscous, just like they are. It’s the only thing they understand.”

“We… pic.twitter.com/CSuRh8TPC7

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 9, 2025

Will the mainstream media cover it now?

Will they agree this was a vicious attack and something needs to be done?

Or will they cover the angle that Trump is commenting on the need for violence against a mentally ill black man that deserves our sympathy?

I’m sure you know which…

*  *  *

As Benjamin Bartee detailed earlier via PJMedia.com, the biggest story in the world over the weekend — on social media, that is; legacy corporate state media ignored it entirely because it’s inconvenient to their narrative — was the unprovoked plunging of a blade into the carotid artery of a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee by a hulking thug with 14 prior arrests for violent crime to his name. 

Unlike the legacy media that refuses to touch rampant and totally disproportionate black-on-white crime on pain of death, Athena Thorne covered the story for PJ Media. 

In more recently released audio to accompany the video, the killer can be heard congratulating himself: “I got that white girl.”

Unsurprisingly, but still shocking to the conscience, BLM-esque activists sympathetic not to the victim but to the cold-blooded murderer launched not one but two GoFundMe fundraisers in the immediate aftermath, even though video of the assault is widely available on social media and depicts a pre-meditated and, again, wholly unprovoked attack on an innocent and defenseless woman who appears to have barely weighed 100 pounds. 

From the first fundraiser for the killer, now deleted but archived here:

 Raising money to assist with legal fees for Decarlos Dejuan Brown JR. anything helps fight against the racism and bias against our people. Thank you for giving us a hand to push against this corrupt narrative

From the second, also deleted but also archived here:

 While what happened on the Blue Line was a tragedy what we mustn’t lose sight of is the fact that Decarlos Brown JR was failed categorically by the Judicial system and the Mental Health Services of North Carolina and as such is not entirely to blame for what happened.

As it is so, we endeavor to raise funds for his legal defense and hope to avoid punitive sentencing and to also get him the aid he requires.

Wow @gofundme is crazy for this pic.twitter.com/j3jHqM3zlI

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) September 7, 2025

The “mental health professionals made him do it” line is so stupid that it’s hard to believe the second fundraiser wasn’t satire. 

Speaking to the Washington Examiner, the company explained that it had removed the pages and refunded donor money:

GoFundMe’s Terms of Service explicitly prohibit fundraisers that raise money for the legal defense of anyone formally charged with an alleged violent crime. Consistent with this long-standing policy, this fundraiser has been removed from the platform and the donors who contributed to the fundraiser have been fully refunded.

In separate but equal news, diverse Charlotte Mayor Vi praised the city’s “media partners” (why should media be in “partnership” with government?) for refusing to air the footage — out of respect for the victim, obviously:

The video of the heartbreaking attack that took Iryna Zarutska’s life is now public. I want to thank our media partners and community members who have chosen not to repost or share the footage out of respect for Iryna’s family.

The hypocrisy is so glaring that it scarcely needs noting, but not one of these DEI public officials — not one — promoted the censorship of the George Floyd overdose video that sparked a summer of rioting from coast to coast.

One must wonder: why the double standard?

Late last week, 475 workers at a Hyundai / LG battery plant being built in Ellabell, Georgia – mostly Korean nationals – were arrested by US Immigration and Customs (ICE) in a massive raid. The factory was previously touted by former President Joe Biden as a ‘win for manufacturing jobs in the United States,’ which obviously didn’t mean American jobs.

Now we learn that South Korean companies have been using sloppy visa practices for workers sent to the US to build advanced manufacturing sites, according to FT, citing Seoul-based executives and industry groups. 

Within the industry, it’s an “open secret” that Korean conglomerates used the B-1 visa, which allows entry into the United States for business purposes – but does not allow the holder to work for payment. The companies are also abusing the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) which allows for short-term business visits.

ICE released video of Korean workers in Georgia’s Hyundai/ LG plant being rounded up. Stunning to say the least. pic.twitter.com/79BJQEGn2d

— Jake Kwon (@therealjakekwon) September 6, 2025

“The business community, the Korean government and diplomats have been well aware of this problem all along,” one industry exec told the Times. “We are very worried that ICE can target other Korean facilities too because they have been following the same practices and have similar problems.”

According to a South Korean official, the companies are an “impossible position,” after successive US governments pushed them to invest billions of dollars to revive American industry while refusing to facilitate short-term working visas for the projects to be completed on time.

South Korea’s government said its citizens’ rights must not be violated in the course of Korean businesses’ work in the US, noting ‘many’ of its nationals had been detained after an immigration raid at a Hyundai Motor facility in Georgia https://t.co/vO1jyRWPWN pic.twitter.com/nsilxUlyi2

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 5, 2025

“The US government is two-faced,” said Chang Sang-sik, head of research at the Korea International Trade Association. “It is asking Korea to invest more in the US, while treating Korean workers like criminals even when it is well aware that they are needed for these projects to happen.”

Or, they could hire Americans?

Of note, South Korea has a free trade agreement with the United States dating back to 2012, however it has no country-specific scheme for working visits – unlike FTA countries such as Canada, Australia and Singapore. The official said Seoul has repeatedly brought up the issue over the past two decades, however various US administrations have told them to pound sand – as the scheme would have to be endorsed by Congress. 

The issue grew in salience during the presidency of Joe Biden, when South Korean companies attracted by generous federal subsidies from the administration’s flagship Inflation Reduction Act, as well as additional state and county-level inducements, pledged tens of billions of dollars to build factories producing chips, batteries and electric vehicles. -FT

According to Jonathan Cleave, managing director for Korea at Intralink – which provides support for foreign investment projects in the United States, the Biden admin actually told them to “Hire American,” however in practice, the American authorities – “and Georgia in particular,” had “turned a blind eye” to Korea’s shoddy documentation, often for short-term “bursts” of construction activity – which was “part of an understanding that the practice was necessary for projects to be completed on time.”

An executive from one of the companies building the raided battery plant in Ellabell told the Times: “We need to send our workers to install new equipment and supervise the project. We can hire US workers once the plant is built, but if the US wants us to hire American workers, our plant should be allowed to be built quickly.”

On Sunday, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that foreign companies investing in the US need to ““LEGALLY bring your very smart people, with great technical talent, to build World Class products,” adding “But we do have to work something out where we bring in experts so that our people can be trained so that they can do it themselves.” 

Yet, according to Chang, “training US workers won’t solve the problem” since Korean companies would still be wary of sharing sensitive technologies with their American workforce. “In the case of chip plants, Korean technicians need to review the adoption of new technologies, repair facilities and make sure that their high-tech facilities are run stably.”

Cleave, meanwhile, says that it’s difficult to find reliable construction workers in the US. 

“They need to build a factory very, very quickly, and it’s very difficult to do that with extreme labour shortages in the US where people are willing to jump ship every time someone opens another factory down the road,” he said. “The Koreans don’t need a workforce that’s loyal to the grave, but they want people who will come in and finish a project.“

Via The Cradle

In the nine months since former Al-Qaeda commander Ahmad al-Sharaa took power in Syria, over 3,000 people have been extrajudicially executed by Syrian security forces and affiliated armed factions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported Sunday.

Between December 8 of last year and September 6, SOHR documented the deaths of 10,672 people across the country in acts of violence and violations by local and foreign parties, including 3,020 people who were extrajudicially executed. “The fall of the Assad regime also coincided with unprecedented security chaos in all Syrian areas,” SOHR noted, resulting in the proliferation of “assassinations and political and sectarian-based massacres.”

The majority of the victims have been from the Alawite and Druze religious minorities in the Syrian coast and in Suwayda, who are viewed as apostates deserving to be killed by the extremists filling the ranks of President Sharaa’s security forces. The total death toll included 8,180 civilians, including 438 children and 620 women, SOHR stated.

In March, Syrian security forces and affiliated militias extrajudicially executed some 1,600 Alawite civilians in 55 locations across the country’s coastal regions. Since that time, Syrian authorities have not brought any of the perpetrators to justice, while sectarian killings of Alawites have continued on an almost daily basis, per reports from the Syria Justice Archive.

On September 6, an Alawite man, 37-year-old Mazen Najla, was killed when armed men opened fire on his shop in the al-Nuzha neighborhood of Homs. The same day, the bodies of two brothers, Alaa Mansour and Maher Mansour, from the village of Al-Safsafiyah in the Hama countryside, were found in the Orontes River.

The men were abducted from their homes on August 24 by armed gunmen affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Al-Qaeda affiliate. On September 4, armed gunmen affiliated with HTS opened fire on members of the Aloush family in front of the Tahir al-Shaar School in Hama, killing three people, including Hassan Aloush, a sports coach at Al-Shorta Club. The Aloush family is Shia and was displaced from the town of Al-Foua in Idlib countryside.

🔴 Alawite man killed in his shop in Homs

Young man Mazen Najla, 37 years old, was killed after an armed terrorist group opened fire on his shop in the al-Nuzha neighborhood of Homs this evening, September 6. Reports also indicate that another person who was with him was… pic.twitter.com/4QW2ZuByLC

— Syria Justice Archive (@SyJusticeArc) September 6, 2025

Mohsen Ibrahim, a young man from the village of Boulos in western rural Hama, was killed after leaving his home on the evening of September 1 to go to a poultry farm where he worked. At around 11pm, contact with him was lost. The following morning, villagers discovered his body on the main road, with his motorcycle and personal belongings stolen.

Hassan Mahdi al-Hajji (Abu Ali) was shot and killed at close range by members of General Security, Syria’s internal security forces. At the time of the shooting, he was near a car wash where he worked, on the Tartous-Homs highway, across from the village of al-Mazraa.

On August 30, three young men, Bashar Mayhoub, Saleh Saqour, and Ali Shadoud, were killed by members of HTS and General Security in the village of Beit Alyan (Beit Kammunah) and the Radar neighborhood in Tartous City.

One of the victims, Bashar Mayhoub, worked as an assistant ship captain, spending most of his time on vessels, and was in Syria for a visit. The same day, an Alawite woman, 77-year-old Amira Nasouri, was killed after a hand grenade was thrown at her home in the village of Al-Aziziya, in the Al-Ghab Plain of Hama Governorate.

Taliban flag raised on the coastal city of Latakia https://t.co/EDHc26LW9X pic.twitter.com/Zqxd8OzqVs

— Hassan Ridha (@sayed_ridha) September 8, 2025

Her husband, 85-year-old Saleh Ali Al-Issa, was severely wounded in the attack and was rushed to the hospital. On the afternoon of August 28, Mohammad Mahmoud Ismail, an elderly Alawite man from the Al-Nazha neighborhood of Homs, was abducted while driving his taxi and has not been heard from since.

One day before, the body of Ali Atta Awad was discovered in the Al-Kiswah area, south of Damascus, after he had been abducted on August 26. Awad, originally from the Shia town of Al-Zahraa in northern Aleppo province, was shot several times. The married father of five had been living in the Sayyida Zainab district of Damascus.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Increasingly hard-to-detect deepfake content created with artificial intelligence is being exploited by criminals to impersonate trusted individuals, the FBI and the American Bankers Association (ABA) said in a report published on Sept. 3.

In its “Deepfake Media Scams” infographic, the FBI said that scams targeting Americans are surging. Since 2020, the agency has received more than 4.2 million reports of fraud, amounting to $50.5 billion in losses. “Imposter scams in particular are on the rise. … Criminals are using deepfakes, or media that is generated or manipulated by AI, to gain your trust and scam you out of your hard-earned money.”

Deepfake content can include altered images, audio, or video. Scammers may pose as family, friends, or public figures, including celebrities, law enforcement, and government officials, the FBI warned.

“Deepfakes are becoming increasingly sophisticated and harder to detect,” said Sam Kunjukunju, vice president of consumer education for the ABA Foundation.

According to the infographic, certain inconsistencies in the AI-generated material can help detect deepfakes.

When it comes to images or videos, people should watch out for blurred or distorted faces; unnatural shadows or lighting; whether audio and video are out of sync; whether the teeth and hair look real; and whether the person blinks too little or too much. In the case of audio, people should listen closely to determine if the tone of voice is too flat or unnatural.

The infographic listed three red flags of a deepfake scam: unexpected requests for money or personal information; emotional manipulation involving urgency or fear; and uncharacteristic communication from what appears to be a known individual.

To remain safe, the ABA and FBI advised Americans to think before responding to emotional or urgent requests, and to create code words or phrases to confirm the identities of loved ones.

“The FBI continues to see a troubling rise in fraud reports involving deepfake media,” said Jose Perez, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division.

[ZH: for example…]

“Educating the public about this emerging threat is key to preventing these scams and minimizing their impact. We encourage consumers to stay informed and share what they learn with friends and family so they can spot deepfakes before they do any harm.”

According to an Aug. 6 report by cybersecurity company Group-IB, the global economic impact of losses from deepfake-enabled fraud is estimated to reach $40 billion by 2027.

“Stolen money is almost never recovered: Due to rapid laundering through money‑mule chains and crypto mixers, fewer than 5 percent of funds lost to sophisticated vishing scams are ever recovered,” it said.

Vishing, a short form of voice phishing, refers to scammers impersonating authority figures such as government officials, tech support personnel, and bank employees to dupe targets and steal money.

According to Group-IB, deepfake vishing relies heavily on emotional manipulation tactics. Targets of such scams include corporate executives and financial employees.

Elderly and emotionally distressed individuals are also vulnerable to deepfake vishing tactics due to their limited digital literacy and unfamiliarity with artificial voice tech, Group-IB added. As such, scams involving impersonation of familiar-sounding voices may have a bigger impact on these individuals.

In June, a deepfake scam incident came to light involving a Canadian man in his 80s losing more than $15,000 in a scheme that used a deepfake of Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

In the scam, Ford was depicted promoting a mutual fund account, which the victim saw via a Facebook ad. When the victim clicked on the ad, a chat opened up, ultimately convincing him to invest the money.

In June, Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) introduced the bipartisan Preventing Deep Fake Scams Act, which aims to tackle the threat posed by such fraud.

The bill seeks to address AI-assisted data and identity theft or fraud by setting up an AI-focused task force in the financial sector.

“Scammers are using deep fakes to impersonate victims’ family members in order to steal their money,” Husted said.

“As fraudsters continue to scheme, we need to make sure we utilize AI so that we can better protect innocent Americans and prevent these scams from happening in the first place. My bill would protect Ohio’s seniors, families and small business owners from malicious actors who take advantage of their compassion.”

On Monday night Israel’s military carried out more major airstrikes across the central and western parts of Syria, which the Jolani regime’s foreign minister condemned as “a blatant infringement” of its sovereignty and regional stability.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that “forces are operating in all combat zones day and night for the security of Israel” – and Israel has been using varying justifications for these attacks, including that former Assad army weapons don’t fall into the hands of extremists.

But this fresh assault was the biggest probably in months, given it involved dozens of separate strikes on ‘military targets’ of the Islamist-led government.

Attacks were observed and reported in Palmyra and Homs, as well as on the coastal city of Latakia. The UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) described that “the Israeli strike near Homs targeted a military unit south of the city”.

Israeli media has pointed to alleged Turkish weapons stores being struck:

The Saudi news channel Al-Hadath reported Tuesday that the IDF site struck overnight in the Syrian city of Homs was a warehouse storing missiles and air defense equipment. According to the report, the weapons were manufactured in Turkey and had recently been transferred to Homs.

Ironically, for years Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar were completely silent when Israel attacked Assad’s Syria literally hundreds of times, but now things have changed, as the Gulf backs the Al-Qaeda linked President Sharaa/Jolani. Arab News writes:

Saudi Arabia has strongly condemned the continued Israeli strikes on Syrian territory, the latest of which targeted several areas in Homs and Latakia governorates.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the attacks as a “flagrant violation” of international law and of the 1974 disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel.

“The Kingdom affirms its full support for the measures taken by the Syrian government to achieve security and stability in Syria, preserve civil peace, and uphold the sovereignty of the state and its institutions over all its territories,” the ministry said.

So suddenly Saudi Arabia and the GCC states start talking about “sovereignty” only after they got their desired regime change in Damascus.

#SYRIA – The Israeli Air Force carried out a series of strikes on Syrian territory overnight

In addition to the air strike at the air-defense base in Homs, another air raid has been conducted on a military related location in #Latakia. pic.twitter.com/FXybptXvb7

— OSINT Military Tracker (@OSINTMilTracker) September 9, 2025

Of course, Saudi and Israeli intelligence had worked behind the scenes for years – sometimes reportedly in coordination – to undermine Syria in support of jihadists militants who sought to overthrow Assad. The result, as we’ve been documenting, has been a huge rise in attacks on religious minorities – including against Christians, Druze, and Alawites.

Radical Saudi clerics have long been present in places like Idlib, and are now in Damascus, in support of the prior anti-Assad jihadist insurgency which now rules the country. Currently, Israel doesn’t want Turkish influence or weapons in the war-ravaged country.